Abstract

Vote Rev ran a small pilot of relationally recruiting vote triplers via Outvote — that is, having a volunteer message friends through Outvote and ask them to be vote triplers. The results are very encouraging: 50% of contacted friends agreed to triple (56% using our higher-performing script), and 40-67% of those agreed to provide names of three friends, depending on how the accounting is done. Compared to other methods of recruiting vote triplers, these are very high recruitment rates.

Program

Vote Rev associate Andrew Sheets used Outvote’s friend-to-friend messaging feature to send Facebook messages to 30 friends. Sheets associated the ask with the ACLU and with recent events, and used one of two scripts:

Script 1: Hi there! I’m volunteering with the ACLU to get out the vote to counteract institutionalized racism and over policing of our communities and want to ask you to use your unique voting superpower—your friends. A reminder from a friend to vote makes all the difference. Can you ask 3 friends to vote this year?

Script 2: Hi there! I’m volunteering with the ACLU to get out the vote to counteract institutionalized racism and over policing of our communities. A reminder form a friend to vote makes all the difference—can you ask 3 friends to vote this year?

Among friends who responded positively, Sheets followed up with most of them asking for the names of three friends they would remind, writing:

Awesome! And just bc it helps to think about it, what are the first names or nicknames of 3 friends you’d think of reminding?

Sheets targeted friends whom he perceived were ideologically sympathetic, but not yet political activists already volunteering for campaigns at scale. Sending initial messages took around 30 seconds per contact, meaning the entire program, including responses, took about an hour of leisurely work, in total.

Results

Overall, 50% of contacts agreed to triple. The response rates to Script 2 (56%)-- the shorter script -- were higher than those for Script 1 (42%), though, given the small sample size the difference is not statistically significant.

Sheets asked 60% of those who agreed to triple to provide names. Out of those, two thirds provided names, which reflects 40% of all triplers. Compared to other methods of vote tripling, these are extremely high rates of name collection.

Qualitatively, the experience is a positive one for prospective volunteers. Sheets reported that, among most triplers, the conversation was: a positive response, the names of 3 friends they would remind to vote, and a little bit of catching up with someone he hadn’t talked to in a while.  Other conversations were about registering to vote out of the country, whether to vote or not after a preferred candidate lost the primary, and how people can get involved in the elections this year. The conversations were pleasant and personal, and make for a great volunteer experience, much more encouraging than, for example, spending hours phone banking strangers without getting responses.

Discussion

This admittedly small-scale pilot provides very encouraging evidence that recruiting vote triplers is a viable and empowering ask for Outvote volunteers, and that relational recruitment of vote triplers in general is one of the most powerful ways to quickly collect pledges.